Cherished Moments

by Anita Mills

  Heedless of the other woman’s presence, Charlotte dropped to the floor beside him. “Of all the cork-brained things to do…well, this is outside of enough, my lord,” she muttered, examining the splint. “Did you think I cannot defend myself?” Before he could answer, she asked almost angrily, “Did you hurt anything else?”

  “Miss Winslow, have you no sense of decency?” the dowager demanded. “He is scarce covered!”

  “A pox on propriety,” Charlotte snapped, sitting back on her knees. “Do you want him to lose the leg or worse?” She looked up. “Most physicians would not have tried to set it, you know, for the bone did not break evenly. As it is, there could still be an infection.”

  He lay there, scarce able to move for the agony. “Don’t touch it again, I pray you,” he whispered.

  “We’ve got to get you up,” she told him. “You only had four drops. Would you have more?”

  He shook his head. “Rum.”

  “Rum is scarce fit for a gentleman, Richard.”

  “See if Mr. Beggs or Mr. Tittle has any,” Charlotte ordered brusquely.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Please. Rum is sometimes used for surgery, I am told. Can you not see how badly he has been injured?”

  “Well, I am sure—” Lady Rexford stopped. “Yes, of course.”

  “And ask them to help get him to bed also.”

  “Sorry,” Rexford murmured. “Useless.”

  “Just for now,” Charlotte reassured him. “In a fortnight, you’ll feel much better, and within a month or so, you’ll be all but well.”

  “I’ll send her packing,” he mumbled. “Won’t have this.”

  The laudanum was beginning to take effect, she could see that, and yet she wondered if it would be enough. She reached to take his hand, squeezing it. “You survived one of Boney’s bullets, my lord. You can survive this also.”

  He didn’t answer.

  Lady Rexford returned to stand over her. “I had this of Beggs.” Looking down, she asked, “Is he any better?”

  “Until we move him.”

  “Do you need a glass for the rum?”

  “No.” Charlotte took the coachman’s flask and opened it. Leaning over the earl, she said distinctly, “One swallow, my lord.”

  As she held it to his mouth, he drank.

  “’E don’t look good,” Beggs observed from behind the dowager.

  “Right peaked,” Tittle agreed.

  “We are going to move you, my lord. Don’t try to do anything yourself,” Charlotte told Rexford. “Just keep the leg straight.”

  He nodded.

  At least it was easier than it had been when they’d carried him in the rain. This time the splint helped, and between them, they got him back to bed. Charlotte lingered to cover him with the blanket and the featherbed off the truckle.

  When she came out, Lady Rexford had discarded her traveling cloak and was standing before the hearth. Turning around, she asked, “He is all right, isn’t he?”

  “No.” Charlotte took a deep breath, then let it out. “Unless he was sitting too close to the fire, he has a fever.”

  “But he cannot!”

  “I think so.”

  Both women waited in the outer room, one pacing nervously, the other sitting. By tacit agreement, neither spoke. Finally, Dr. Alstead emerged from the bedchamber.

  It was Charlotte who spoke up. “How is he, sir?”

  “Well, the leg does not appear infected, which I count a blessing. Oh, there is some swelling, of course, but the wound itself is not hot to the touch.”

  “Then whatever—?”

  He turned to Charlotte. “Perhaps the ague, perhaps the onset of a lung infection.”

  “A lung infection!” the dowager gasped. “But he cannot!”

  The doctor regarded her for a long moment. “Madam,” he declared, “if he has lungs, they can become infected. And if he doesn’t have them, he is dead.”

  “If it is the ague?” Charlotte asked.

  “It’ll run its course. Be damned sick for a few days, but then ’tis over.”

  “But he has not been coughing,” Charlotte said, encouraging herself.

  “I got that out of him. Been too sore, he says. Daresay he may have cracked a rib or two with the rest of it.”

  “Perhaps if I took him home—”

  Alstead looked at the countess as though she’d lost her mind. “It will be weeks before he can be transported anywhere in any comfort. Just now it is more important to keep him quiet and as comfortable as may be. We will treat the symptoms, of course.”

  “He despises gruel,” Charlotte said.

  “So he told me. Pork jelly, eh?”

  “A restorative pork jelly, I believe the label boasted. It was a gift for a sketch.”

  “Might as well give him what he wants. Make up honey and vinegar if he coughs, onion poultice for congestion, and give laudanum for pain.”

  “And for the fever?”

  “Willow bark tea. Not too strong, mind you.”

  Charlotte sighed. “Perhaps I’d best write down the recipe for the poultice.”

  “Common enough one.”

  “Yes, but I am never ill, and I cannot say I have ever mixed one.”

  “Lard and onions, that’s all. Cook ’em until the onions are shiny but not soft. Put it on while ’tis still warm. Every four hours for half an hour. If that doesn’t work, thump him.”

  “Thump him?” Lady Rexford said faintly.

  “Pound his chest to loosen the phlegm. Beyond that, if he gets markedly worse, send for me, and I’ll blister him. At this stage, I don’t favor a purge or a blood-letting.”

  After he left, Charlotte broached the problem of sleeping to Rexford’s mother. “There are only two beds—the one he is in and the truckle. I have exactly three usable blankets to my name, and one featherbed that can be used for a cover when the weather is too cold. I am afraid I simply do not have any place for you or Mr. Beggs and Mr. Tittle to sleep, nor do I have any shelter for your horses. There, I have said it.”

  “And just where do you intend to sleep, Miss Winslow?” the dowager asked archly.

  “I had thought to ask the men to move the truckle out here. If I give Lord Rexford the blankets, I shall need the fire.”

  “I see.”

  “There are lodgings to be had in Whitby, my lady.”

  For a long time, Lady Rexford stared into the fire. “No,” she said finally, “he may not wish it, but I intend to stay here. He is, after all, my son.” Raising her eyes to Charlotte’s, she decided, “I shall take the truckle, and you may take the chair.”

  “Lady Rexford, this is my house.”

  The dowager looked daggers at her. “At twenty pounds, I should think you handsomely paid for it. Thirty pounds, young woman, is as high as I mean to go.”

  “I don’t want your money…or his,” Charlotte answered evenly. “I want him to live.”

  At that, Lady Rexford looked away. “He wishes me at Jericho, I am sure, but I will not leave him like this.”

  “No, of course not.” As much as she disliked the older woman already, Charlotte could almost feel sorry for her. “As you say, he is your son.”

  “It was not always like this, Miss Winslow. He once was a kind, generous boy.”

  “And now he is a man of thirty-nine,” Charlotte observed dryly. “Sit down, and I shall brew some tea.”

  “You do think he will be all right, don’t you?”

  “I hope so, but he may limp.”

  “He has limped since he came home from the war, Miss Winslow.”

  “Yes, of course. He took a ball, didn’t he?”

  “And it was such folly. He did not have to go. But after Helena…well, it does not signify now.”

  Charlotte measured tea leaves into the teapot, then got out cups and saucers. “I shall have to fetch the cream,” she murmured, excusing herself.

  When she returned from the cold cellar, Charlotte saw that Lady Rexford
stood before the opera house poster. The woman turned around. “You live with an artist, Miss Winslow?”

  “I drew that.”

  “Really? How very odd, to be sure.”

  “Actually, I much prefer painting to rearing other people’s children.”

  “It looks very much like the creature,” the dowager conceded.

  “So Lord Rexford said.”

  The older woman’s lips thinned in disapproval. “Well, I daresay he ought to know. But I shall say no more on that head, save that she is a grasping harpy. I have no use for opera singers, I’m afraid.”

  “Nor artists, apparently,” Charlotte muttered.

  “A mother wants more for her son, Miss Winslow. Above all else I would have him happy. There can be no happiness in a succession of lightskirts.” She looked up. “You sell these pictures for a living?”

  “I am afraid I must. It puts food on my table, you see.”

  “Yes, that is a consideration, I suppose. Unless of course you get your clutches into my son,” the woman added slyly. “You would not be the first female I have bought off, you know.”

  “Lady Rexford—”

  “But as we are thrown together for the moment, I shall say nothing more on that head.”

  “No wonder he does not come home often.”

  The woman blenched, then recovered. “That, Miss Winslow, is none of your affair,” she snapped.

  “No, it isn’t. Well, in any event, if you should suffer a surfeit of boredom while here, you may look at my sketchbooks for amusement. I keep them in that box by the larger chair.”

  Rexford’s mother looked again at the watercolor of Madame Rondelli. “You are rather talented,” she decided.

  “Actually, I had a rather good instructor at Miss Finch’s Select Academy for Females at Chester. He told me I should not waste my time drawing poor flowers if I could master people.” Charlotte moved away to strain the strong tea through a cloth. “I still dislike doing the flowers, for I can never quite do justice to them. To me, only God can make a credible rose.”

  “You went to Miss Finch’s?”

  “Yes.”

  Sitting down, Lady Rexford appeared to study a worn rug for a moment. “Surely you can afford a maid.”

  “I have been here so long I should not know what to do with one.”

  “But the cooking, the keeping of the house—”

  “There is but Rex and me.” Seeing that the dowager’s eyebrow lifted anew, she explained. “Rex is my cat—for Reginald,” she lied, handing a cup of tea to the woman. “I do not particularly care for chopping wood, but then I daresay a maid might cavil at that task, anyway,” she added, taking the other chair.

  “But if you went to Miss Finch’s, you must have been properly presented,” Lady Rexford murmured.

  “So long ago I can scarce remember it. It was fifteen years ago. After my father died, I couldn’t afford to return to London.”

  “Yes, gaming is the bane of gentlemen, isn’t it?” The other woman stared pensively into the fire, and the conversation ended. For a time there was no sound beyond the clinking of cup against saucer and the logs popping in the grate. “My husband died young, leaving me but Richard, you know,” she said ever so softly.

  Finally, Charlotte could stand it no longer. “I quite understand what you fear, Lady Rexford, but I am not so green as to think he would care for me. At thirty-three, I am quite on the shelf.”

  “Yes, of course you are,” the woman murmured, her voice nearly too low to hear. Setting her cup aside, she rose. “I should like to sit with Richard, I think.”

  “As Mr. Beggs and Mr. Tittle must surely be freezing, they will wish to put up in Whitby, I should think. Would you mind terribly if I were to ride in with them?”

  “But how will you get back?”

  “I am used to walking, and I do not truly mind the cold.” Rising also, Charlotte carried the cups to her sink, then moved to roll Mr. Burleigh’s poster. “This must go out to London today.”

  “Oh. Well, I am sure we shall not need you at all.” The dowager went to the small, distorted window and stared out absently. Then she turned and walked to the bedchamber to watch over her son. “But you’d best get coffee, for Richard does not like tea in the morning,” she said over her shoulder.

  Between the laudanum and the rum, he slept too soundly to disturb. She sat there, looking into his face, remembering him as a grubby little boy, and she felt an intense loss. There had been a time when he’d run laughing across the terrace, when he’d come in from a romp with his dogs and put muddy handprints on her wide, full skirts. And she could remember how his boyish grin had lasted far past his school years. Until Helena.

  She heard the cottage door open, then close. And she could not help thinking how very different Miss Winslow was from Helena. Very gently, she leaned to touch her son’s brow, feeling the heat beneath her fingertips.

  “She still isn’t for you, my son,” she whispered. “An earl needs a wife of breeding, a girl like Miss Sedgely.”

  There was no change in the rhythm of his breathing, no sign that he heard. Sighing, she stood and walked slowly back into the other room.

  She surveyed the place Charlotte Winslow called home, thinking the girl must never know how close she had come to snaring Rexford. No, it was better to let that lie, to pretend it had never happened. After all, she could not have known just how foolish Helena would prove.

  She walked to the box beside the larger chair and lifted the lid. There were several sketchbooks inside, and a folder beneath. Curious, she set the books aside and carefully took out the folder. She opened it, and her breath caught. For a long time, she stared at his handsome face, committing it to memory, until she could no longer see through her tears.

  Charlotte’s face was ruddy from the cold when she stepped inside and threw the latch. Seeing that Lady Rexford sat before the fire, the sketchbooks on her lap, she moved closer.

  “How is he?”

  “He hasn’t stirred since you left.”

  “And his fever?”

  “It remains the same.”

  “At least that is something,” Charlotte said, taking off her cloak. Walking to hang it on a peg, she added, “I brought more willow bark.”

  “I cannot think it his lungs, for there is no rattle.”

  “’Tis more like the ague. Mrs. Bottoms says it is going ’round just now.”

  “I think so.” Seeing that the younger woman carried a bowl, Lady Rexford asked, “What is that?”

  “Word travels fast here, ’twould seem, for Mrs. Bottoms, who can scarce abide me, sent up cabbage soup ‘for his lordship the earl.’ So now we have a choice at least—cabbage soup or boiled mutton and potatoes.”

  “I have a French cook at home.” The dowager caught herself. “Yes, well, I daresay you will make what you like.”

  “The soup, then. Rexford ought to be able to eat it.”

  “He cannot abide soups. But,” the older woman sighed, “It is probably a great deal better than the dreadful things he ate during the war.”

  Charlotte transferred the soup to the hanging kettle, then suspended it over the fire. “Odd he should have chosen to go,” she said casually.

  “So I said, but Helena had just died.”

  “I understand there is a daughter,” Charlotte added, holding her hands out to warm them at the hearth.

  There was a brief pause, and when she spoke again the dowager’s voice was strained. “Sophie is nearly ten now. She’s quite lovely, really.”

  “And he left her for the war? That is, it seems rather unnatural to me, but then Papa and I were always close.”

  “She isn’t Richard’s, for all that she bears the Linden name. He was furious when Fairfax refused to rear her.”

  “And you have her now?”

  “Yes, she lives with me, Miss Winslow. I would not let him repudiate her.”

  “The poor child.”

  “She was the daughter I never had, you see,
” the dowager answered slowly. “I’d had hopes of Helena, of course, but that was a mistake. So now I have reared Sophie.”

  “He must have loved Lady Helena enough to wed her. I cannot think how she could have wanted to play him false, but then—”

  “A man’s sense of duty and honor can be manipulated, Miss Winslow.” As Charlotte looked down at her, she nodded. “Once. She was my goddaughter. A duke’s daughter, and she was so very pretty. He ought to have worshipped her.”

  “And he did not.”

  “No. And when he would not live in her pocket, she quickly assembled a court of her own. In turn, he amused himself elsewhere. Now I can quite see they never suited. She needed constant admiration more than affection. In the end, it was a tragedy, Miss Winslow. When Helena died, I had to name the babe myself. Sophia Eugenia Linden.”

  “And Miss Sedgely?”

  “I thought to rectify my mistake. Meg is a dear, sweet, obedient creature, not nearly so empty in the cockloft as Helena, I assure you. She is the sort of female who could settle him down, I think. And the blood is good enough to pass to my grandson.”

  “Don’t you think Rexford ought to decide that?”

  The dowager’s face clouded, then she sighed. “Well, I am sure if I were to recommend the greatest paragon alive, he would dislike her.”

  “Lady Rexford, why are you telling me this?” Charlotte asked suspiciously. “I cannot think you can possibly wish to wash your linen before a stranger.”

  “It doesn’t matter. If it were left up to him, I daresay he would not wed again.”

  “Which seems a pity. I knew him once, when I was presented. He was young and handsome then, and every girl I knew had a tendre for him. And of course he played the gallant for all of us.”

  “He would.”

  Charlotte sighed. “I was such a green girl then. I was like all the rest. I even wrote him when Papa died.” Then, afraid she’d said too much, she hastened to add, “But of course I can quite see everything different now. You must not think I expect anything from him, for I am older and no longer given to foolish notions.”